Malignaggi: Golden Boy will make GGG wait a year before Canelo trilogy

By Sean Jones: Paulie Malignaggi still insists that Gennady Golovkin was robbed by the judges in his fight last weekend against Saul Canelo Alvarez in fight number 2 between them at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Malignaggi saw the fight as a close win for Golovkin or a draw, but not a victory for Canelo. Malignaggi thinks Golovkin out-boxed Canelo by staying in the center of the ring, jabbing and controlling he fight. Malignaggi notes that Golovkin didn’t get backed up against the ropes, so he didn’t buy into the whole business about Canelo beating him with his ‘Mexican style.’

Malignaggi doubts that Golden Boy Promotions will put the third fight between Canelo and Golovkin together until 12 months has passed by in order to purposefully age GGG. The idea would be for GGG to be aged enough for Canelo to beat Golovkin for real in the third fight without the judges needing to help him in that fight, which would be a first as far as Malignaggi is concerned. He thinks Canelo lost both of the two fights with GGG, but was saved by the judges both times in Las Vegas.

“Yeah, Golovkin will get older in a year,” Malignaggi said to Fighthype when asked if Golden Boy will make a third fight between Canelo and GGG. “They’ll probably make Lemieux vs. Canelo, and make Golovkin wait. You’ve got Golovkin by the balls now. You can do whatever you want with him. In a year, he’s fighting a year older. You can let him get a year older, and you bring him back in a year. He’s 37 [by then]. You beat him then, and then you make people forget about the first two fights, because people won’t even talk about how he got robbed in the first two fights, because Canelo will win the fight for real when he’s 37. Canelo will win for real next year, and then you won’t even talk about how the guy got robbed twice. It’s f—ed up,” Malignaggi said.

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It would be a tragedy if Canelo, 28, and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions were to make Golovkin wait an entire year before making the third fight with the idea of aging him enough to where the fight has been taken out of him. Canelo and Golden Boy might believe that the fight results weren’t controversial for the two fights, but a good sized portion the boxing public sees both fights as controversial. If Canelo and his promoters are comfortable with the fans seeing their win as illegitimate then that’s on them. They can make Golovkin wait. Given all that’s taken place in the two fights, it would be better for Golden Boy to make a third fight with GGG as soon as possible, and making it in a location outside of Nevada so that it’s not seen by boxing fans as a situation where they’re purposefully choosing that state in order to get preferential treatment.

Last weekend, Alvarez won by a 12 round majority decision by the scores 114-114, 115-113 and 115-113. The decision was an unpopular one with the crowd, who booed in showing that they didn’t see the results the same way the Nevada judges did.

Malignaggi didn’t see what some boxing fans saw with Canelo boxing GGG up during the fight. Malignaggi observed that Golovkin took over the fight in the second half, and hurt Canelo in the 10th and 11th rounds with big shots. Canelo never hurt GGG during his best rounds. Golovkin looked tired in the first half of the fight, but when he suddenly came on in the second half of the fight, he was hurting Canelo and getting the better of him. In scoring the fight, it appeared that Golovkin had won more rounds in the eyes of a lot boxing fans. At the minimum, GGG was seen as having gotten a draw.

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Golovkin and his promoters at K2 unquestionably gave Canelo and his promoters at Golden Boy some huge advantages in agreeing to fight in Las Vegas again, which is where Alvarez always fights now.

Golovkin landed the better shots in the second half of the fight, and he was the one that had his opponent hurt.

A third fight between Canelo and GGG might take place in September of next year. It’s unlikely that Golden Boy will chance it to make Golovkin wait longer than that, because there’s too much risk that he’ll lose to someone else if they wait. If Malignaggi’s theory on Golden Boy setting out to age Golovkin enough for Canelo to finally beat him without controversy, then they have to wait 12 months to make the fight in September of 2019. Canelo likely won’t fight in December because he was cut up by GGG, and beaten more than what showed. Canelo will want to lick his wounds and come back in May of 2019. David Lemieix is the name being mentioned for Canelo’s next fight, be it in December of this year or May of next year.

”If the guy was getting pressed, he would have been on the ropes,”Malignaggi said about Golovkin. ”He wasn’t getting pressed. He was boxing. There’s a difference. If you’re close to the ropes, then the pressure brought you there. If you’re in the center of the ring the whole time, you’re in control. The sport is called boxing. I don’t see where the pressure got to him, because he would have been on the ropes. I’ll give him more credit for losing this way, because he lost, but they gave him the fight,” Malignaggi said about Canelo. “So how am I not going to talk about how Golovkin got robbed, because that’s what happened. In reality, it should have been a Golovkin win. We should have been talking about how Canelo upped his game, even in a losing effort. He showed character with the Mexican style, but he lost. Instead, you got to talk about a fight where Golovkin got robbed. I think it was 7-5, 6-6 fight for Golovkin. I don’t think you can give more rounds to Canelo Alvarez. I can’t find it, sorry. If you’re giving more than six rounds for Canelo, then you’re stretching. He got robbed twice,” Malignaggi said about GGG.